SAY HELLO TO MUSIC PROJECT - FRIENDSHIP CHAIN 2

MESSAGE 1

CLARINETIST DIMITRI ASHKENAZY SAYS HELLO TO HARPIST ÇAĞATAY AKYOL

In deed this project started much before, in May It started with Dimitri Ashkenazy. I was at the Concert Hall (the Chapel) of Nôtre Dame de Sion High School in Harbiye district to write a review on the season-closing concert of Orchestra’Sion under the conductorship of Orçun Orçunsel on 27 May 2015. And that night Dimitri Ashkenazy was the soloist to play Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto K 622.

After the concert we were at the backstage, packed with people, energy and lots of noise. I didn’t know how Ashkenazy would react to my question, the project idea had just taken shape in my head. So at the spur of the moment, just made up few trivial introductory questions to warm up before coming to the real subject. Well, because I was too excited I asked the most stupid ones I guess that I would almost lose all my chances. So at last I said in haste “Okey Mr. Ashkenzy please forget what I have asked you so far. Just tell me this, Do you have any musician friend you missed?”
That was the U-turn moment. At last I had pulled his attention. And when I told him I would record his voice and pass his message to that friend, his eyes shined like that of a child, so we recorded the very first message of SAY HELLO TO MUSIC Project that night. So from here I would like to thank Mr. Ashkenazy for giving the first spark to the Project and encouraging me to start all this thing, with those shining eyes.

MESSAGE 2

If Ashkenazy gave the first spark, harpist Çağatay Akyol fired the Project with his exploding laughter the moment he realized his old buddy’s voice through the noisy record. That was the YES-THEY-NEED-IT-AND-I-SHOULD CARRY-ON moment for me. We had a very lovely talk with Mr. Akyol that evening, reaching to his old memories with Abbado and the Karajan’s family, and to what is like to be the first Turkish harpist in an Anglo-Saxon orchestra world, all of which I would like to share with the Andante readers soon.

Here is Çağatay Akyol and his story with Dimitri Ashkenazy, or Dimka, as they all him.

THE OMNIPRESENT DIMKA!

VIDEOS FOR YOUR INTEREST
In the last video you will have the chance to watch and listen Çağatay Akyol playing
Hitite harps (which belong to 3700 years ago) which is quite an interesting sight.

MESSAGE 3

HARPIST ÇAĞATAY AKYOL SAYS HELLO TO CELLIST KONSTANTIN PFIZ

Çağatay Akyol picked a friend, this time from Mahler Chamber Orchestra, whom he hasn’t seen for so many years as well. He is called Konstantin Pfiz or “Fitz” among his friends.
Fitz is a German cellist, born in Wilhelmshaven in the Northwest of Germany. He regularly plays in Lucerne Festival Orchestra and as a principal cello in Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Until recently he was also an instructor at the Slokar Summer Academy in Ljubljana.

THE “FITZ”

MESSAGE 4

CELLIST KONSTANTIN PFIZ SAYS HELLO BACK TO
HARPIST ÇAĞATAY AKYOL

It was not that easy to reach Mr. Pfiz through social media or dial-up programmes. But thanks to the contact addresses shared in the now silent website of Slokar Academy, not to forget the kind help of Ms. Andreja Zupanc, I could reach Mr. Pfiz. Due to summer and other private reasons we had to wait even more to realize our video interview. But it was worth waiting. We did the interview in Lucerne, just hours before a Mahler 5 concert with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra! Here it is…

“YOU ARE STILL IN GOOD SHAPE”

VIDEOS FOR INTEREST
The second video is of a concert realized by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra against cultural vadalism, in other words the disbanding orchestras, in Europe and to remind how fundemantal culture is in our lives.

Lucerne Festival Orchestra was founded by Claudio Abbado around a core of players from Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra, where Konstantin Pfiz and Çağatay Akyol (as a guest artist) have been playing. So the third video is a 2012 performance of Gustav Mahler’s “Ressurection” by Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Abbado himself.

TO BE CONTINUED...
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